Posted on: Thursday, May 17, 2001

Army's Makua report incomplete, says lawyer

By William Cole
Advertiser MIlitary Writer

An attorney for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund yesterday blasted the Army's latest findings on plans for a return to live-fire training in Makua Valley.

Attorney David Henkin said language from previous drafts concerning environmental effects was left out of the new environmental assessment in violation of federal regulations.

Henkin also said a clear case continues to be made for a more comprehensive environmental impact statement.

The Army has turned down requests for an environmental impact statement, saying it would take two to five years and cost millions of dollars.

Earthjustice's charges follow an announcement Tuesday by the Army that it plans to resume live-fire training at Makua Military Reservation as early as July, after a more than two-year hiatus.

Earthjustice has filed suit along with community group Malama Makua, seeking to force the Army to prepare an environmental impact statement.

The organization has pledged to seek an injunction preventing any return to the 4,190-acre valley if the legal issue is not settled.

"The Army's claim that it can do live-fire training at Makua without significant impacts is an insult to the people of the Wai'anae Coast, who have witnessed the devastation that military training inflicts," said Leandra Wai, president of the group, in a statement.

Army Maj. Nancy Makowski yesterday said the phone book-size environmental assessment released Tuesday is "very comprehensive," and said Henkin was taking wording changes out of context.

"Our finding of no significant impact (in the valley) is not what they are looking for," Makowski said. "They are critical of the environmental assessment we prepared. However, we have every confidence it is a document that supports our view that we can return to training and still care for the lands entrusted to our care."

Henkin said the National Environmental Policy Act requires an environmental impact statement for any proposed action that "has the potential to" significantly affect the environment.

In its September draft assessment, the Army made note of "the potential impacts associated with activities at Makua to threatened and endangered species cannot be eliminated or minimized to insignificant or discountable levels," Henkin said.

That statement was removed from Tuesday's document, Henkin said. Similarly, the Army deleted the phrase, "likely to be jeopardized by military training" from a list of endangered plants found in a U.S. Fish & Wildlife study, the attorney said.

Makowski said the latter change was only a "a matter of making a label on a chart easier to understand," and in both cases, the data did not change.